[The public outcry and a trial underway in
Bishkek have exposed Chinese business practices and local corruption to months
of intense scrutiny from Kyrgyzstan’s boisterous news media and elected
politicians. The scandal also highlights a tectonic shift underway in the
economics and geopolitics of Central Asia, a vast, resource-rich expanse of
desert, steppe and mountains that Russia has viewed as its turf for centuries.]
By
Andrew Higgins
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The chimneys of the power
plant in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, that broke down not
long after an overhaul
last year, leaving much of the city without heat or
electricity in subzero
weather. Credit Maxime Fossat
for The New York Times
|
BISHKEK,
Kyrgyzstan — Officials in
Kyrgyzstan knew they could no longer put off the decision. An aging plant that
provided nearly all the heat and electricity for the country’s capital was on
its last legs.
As the officials were weighing rival bids to
reconstruct the plant, letters arrived at the Kyrgyz Energy Ministry and
Foreign Ministry from the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital. They
strongly “recommended” a Chinese company called TBEA as the “only executor” for
the project, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
It was more than just a recommendation. China
was dangling the prospect of a loan to Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian nation of
6.2 million people, but made clear that its favored contractor had to be
chosen. Believing they had no option, the Kyrgyz officials selected TBEA, a
company with grand ambitions but modest experience in building and repairing
power stations.
The 2013 decision to choose TBEA over a far
more experienced Russian company led to disaster. Last year, soon after the
overhaul was completed, the plant broke down, leaving much of Bishkek without
heat or electricity in freezing weather.
The public outcry and a trial underway in
Bishkek have exposed Chinese business practices and local corruption to months
of intense scrutiny from Kyrgyzstan’s boisterous news media and elected
politicians. The scandal also highlights a tectonic shift underway in the
economics and geopolitics of Central Asia, a vast, resource-rich expanse of
desert, steppe and mountains that Russia has viewed as its turf for centuries.
Fierce rivals during the Soviet era who
fought a dangerous border conflict in 1969, Russia and China settled into
something of a cold peace in subsequent decades. Lately, though, the two
nations have made a great show of drawing together strategically and
commercially, a relationship fueled primarily by tensions with the United
States and its Western allies.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and the man he
recently described as his “best friend,” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia,
last month traded smiles and gibes about the United States during trips to
Central Asia. They both attended a meeting in Kyrgyzstan of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, a group of regional states established by China, and
then met again in neighboring Tajikistan, where Mr. Putin gave the Chinese
leader a birthday gift of ice cream.
Despite the growing ties, however, a
deep-seated rivalry remains between the two former adversaries, one that this
case exposes.
“There is a big hidden fight going on between
Russia and China for influence in Central Asia,” said Rasul Umbetaliev, a
former Kyrgyz official and energy expert. Russia has more support from a Kyrgyz
population that often speaks Russian and looks to Moscow as a place to work or
study, he said, but “the Russians don’t have any money.”
The power of Chinese cash is at the center of
the trial in Bishkek of a former Kyrgyz prime minister, Sapar Isakov, and other
former officials accused of corruption relating to the TBEA contract.
Prosecutors say rigged bidding and inflated pricing will cost Kyrgyzstan $111
million.
Mr. Isakov denies that there was anything
untoward about the contract, and says that neither he nor any other Kyrgyz
official selected TBEA. The choice was made “by the government of the P.R.C.,”
meaning the People’s Republic of China, he said in a recent statement issued
from jail. That was China’s right, “since it financed the modernization
project,” he said.
The statement offered a rare insider’s
acknowledgment that China, with the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves,
can tilt the business playing field abroad to serve its interests no matter
what local residents think or rivals offer.
A commission created by the Kyrgyz Parliament
found widespread irregularities in the awarding and execution of the contract.
TBEA was not chosen after an open, competitive tender, but through a
closed-door review of bids submitted by a few companies that had somehow
learned a contract was available.
Iskhak Masaliev, an opposition lawmaker on
the parliamentary commission, says he believes that TBEA’s Russian rival, Inter
RAO, never stood a chance. “The whole project smelled bad from the start, but
if there had not been an accident, nobody would have noticed,” he said.
Xiao Qinghua, China’s former ambassador to
Kyrgyzstan, told the Kyrgyz news media that TBEA had been selected because it
was an “authoritative” company with a “good global reputation.” He declined to
comment on the findings of the Kyrgyz investigations.
“We do not interfere with them,” he said. “We
respect the sovereignty of Kyrgyzstan.” TBEA’s head office in China did not
respond to repeated requests for comment.
The power plant fiasco, the persistent troubles
of a Chinese-funded refinery and Kyrgyz anger over China’s oppression of the
Uighurs, a fellow Turkic Muslim people, have curbed Beijing’s ambitions
somewhat, at least temporarily.
But Russia has struggled to compete in what
has become a new version of the so-called Great Game, the 19th-century struggle
over Central Asia between Russia and Britain. Citing Russia’s “unfavorable
economic situation” and inability to provide promised funding, Kyrgyzstan in
2016 scrapped an agreement to allow Russian companies to build a series of dams
and hydroelectric plants in the north of the country.
Russia still has large reserves of good will
in the former Soviet republics, and it remains the region’s dominant security
player. On a visit to Kyrgyzstan in March, Mr. Putin secured an agreement to
expand an air base that Russian military forces have used since the Soviet era.
But when it comes to building roads,
refineries and power lines, China has left Russia far behind.
Central Asia is a crucial part of China’s
Belt and Road Initiative, the signature policy of Mr. Xi, who announced the
gigantic infrastructure program on a visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013.
Days later, Mr. Xi traveled to neighboring Kyrgyzstan and told officials in
Bishkek that the Export-Import Bank of China could finance the reconstruction
of the capital’s aging heating and electricity plant.
The bank’s loans to Kyrgyzstan, just $9
million in 2008, have ballooned to more than $1.7 billion. Some estimates put
the value of infrastructure projects financed by China at $2.2 billion, almost
a third of the value of Kyrgyzstan’s annual economic output.
Mr. Xi’s intervention turned the Bishkek
power plant into an early test of Belt and Road. Anxious that Kyrgyz officials
were not moving faster, the Chinese Embassy prodded them in November 2013 to
get the project started, repeating the insistence that TBEA do the work and
stressing that “this is the final position of the Chinese side.”
The loan offer, the embassy said in a letter
to the Kyrgyz Ministry of Energy and Industry, “was one of the fundamental
results of the first visit by the head of the Chinese state and gave important
meaning to the development of an energy project so significant for the Kyrgyz
economy.”
Construction started shortly afterward.
Nurlan Omurkul, who was chief of the plant,
said that he had harbored strong doubts about hiring a company with no track
record of building power stations, but that he had been badgered by senior
Kyrgyz officials to endorse a decision that he said had obviously already been
made.
“They just kept saying, ‘Agree, agree,
agree,’ ” he said.
Mr. Omurkul was fired after the breakdown
last year, charged with negligence and sentenced this year to four years in
prison. In an interview before his conviction, he said the case against him and
other technical experts had been a smoke screen to hide corruption by senior
officials.
“I’ve worked my whole life in power and
heating plants and knew all along that the Chinese price of $386 million was
too expensive,” he said. Kyrgyzstan will pay about $470 million over 20 years,
including interest and fees.
Another Chinese company, China Machinery
Engineering Corporation, offered a lower bid, $356 million, the parliamentary
commission said in its report. But the Chinese Embassy insisted that its offer
be dismissed. It is not clear why Chinese diplomats took sides so forcefully,
but TBEA is based in Xinjiang, the Western region whose economic development is
a priority for Beijing.
The losing Russian bidder, Inter RAO, bid
$518 million, but for very different terms. Rather than require Kyrgyzstan to
borrow, the Russian company offered to invest its own money to build an
entirely new plant in return for partial ownership and a share of future
revenue.
The minutes of government meetings about the
project show that some Kyrgyz experts favored the Russian proposal, while
others favored the cheaper Chinese option. But those views made no headway
against the Chinese Embassy’s unequivocal support for TBEA.
Mr. Omurkul, the fired plant director, said
he began to fathom why TBEA’s price was so high after he started receiving
reports listing items like $1,600 for fire extinguishers, $320 for pliers and
tens of millions of dollars in unspecified consulting fees.
“It was obscene,” he said. “We were all in
shock.”
Mr. Masaliev, the lawmaker on the
parliamentary investigating commission, said that for all the strong-arm
tactics of the Chinese, he believes it was Kyrgyz officials who were siphoning
money off the project.
The son of a senior Communist Party official
during the Soviet era, Mr. Masaliev has known and worked with Russians for
decades. But China, about which he knows little except that it has a lot of
money and people, makes him nervous.
“Of course we are afraid,” he said. “A small
Chinese town has more people in it than our entire population.”
